beautiful letdown

I just finished tearing up a lovely, empty 2008-2009 planner for recycling. I don’t know what it is that draws me to these things. The covers are always attractive, and when I stare into the inside, the well-ordered lines and boxes fill me with longing. I CAN fit my life into these little boxes, and I will! And I will be ORGANIZED!

This one, besides being pink and striped and flowered, had both a monthly calendar view and a weekly one. I like these the best, although on paper they are complicated because you have to put your entry in twice or something gets missed. But coming from the youth ministry world, where things are often “every other Tuesday” or “First Sunday night” of the month, I grew very accustomed to having the monthly view. I think Google calendars is slowly curing me of that, though.

For years, I have mostly kept my calendar in my head, usually because I forgot to bring the planner or couldn’t find it when I needed to write something down. Keeping it in my head made it easier, in some respects–forcing myself to memorize the calendar meant that if I forgot to write it down, it was still in my head.

But the Flylady says to write everything down. Ok. I am getting a little better at this with Google calendars. I don’t quite trust myself enough to not keep any of my calendar in my head just yet. And neither do I have instant gCal access (via the iPhone, ahem) yet, so I am keeping some things in my head still.

I do need to work on the instinctive habit of saying “sure” without consulting both the calendar AND my brain. This is causing much trouble. I’m learning that I’m not a spontaneous person; when an event is called because of rain or other reasons, often I’ll forget that I was invited for another activity or that there is something else going on that I could do and make all new plans instead. It’s gotten embarrassing, a little.

i think I just need to trust Flylady and get better at writing it down. And get that iPhone!